Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Education in Contemporary Higher Education

Debashish — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:00:47 -0700

Sri Aurobindo envisaged the goal of human becoming as a transformed society and civilization based on the expressions of an integral consciousness. However, in keeping with the collective dimension of this goal, a transformed society was envisaged by him not merely as the end result of individual transformations, but as the dynamically transforming life-context or field which would allow and facilitate individual transformation. Seen from this standpoint, the social discipline of education, meant to “socialize,” “in-form” and inculcate the cultural, knowledge and epistemological skills of the social habitus for individual engagement takes on a changed meaning related to a new phenomenology, epistemology and teleology of human and social becoming. Integral Education then becomes a socially acknowledged and authorized praxis of the Integral Yoga or at least the pedagogical condition for its social possibility and collective transformation.

Though much has been written and several attempts at implementation made to formulate Integral Education as a form of child education, the higher educational possibilities and ramifications of Integral Education have remained largely untheorized. This paper is an attempt to think through some of these possibilties and implementations. Debashish Banerji is the educational coordinator of The University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles.

Knowledge and Human Liberation - Excerpts from Ananta Kumar Giri Annotated by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:46:05 -0700

This is an annotated introduction to the first chapter of a recent book Knowledge and Human Liberation by Ananta Kumar Giri of the Madras Institute of Development Studies. The essay tries to engage Jurgen Habermas and Sri Aurobindo in a thought dialog. The potency of Jurgen Habermas (1929 - ) in a postmodern era has sustained itself due to the questions of human liberty, equality, ethics and understanding he has prioritized over those of knowledge, identity or experience. Habermas’ most powerful contribution to contemporary thought has been in the theorization of the “public sphere.” In elaborating its implications, Habermas focuses on what he calls “communicative reason.” Communicative rationality, according to him, is "oriented to achieving, sustaining and reviewing consensus - and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims.” This discipline of intersubjective practice restores the lifeworld from its fragmentation under ideological or economic (commodified) alien consolidations. Thus Habermas’ communicative speech acts operate under an implicit faith in Human universality and its inevitable collective experience as social and individual knowledge, a continuation of the Enlightenment ideal.

A discplined intersubjective praxis of creative communication can very well be seen as a part of the social realization of an integral spiritual ideal in a plural field. Usually this has not been clearly described or prioritized by scholars and practitioners of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Non-Dualism, the emphasis having been directed towards the articulation of a universal (integral) Psychology, in terms taken from Sri Aurobindo’s own writing. But such denotative asocial descriptions have tended to subjugate phenomenological variety and social/cultural/personal experience. As a consequence, the danger of a totalitarian epistemology in the name (nomos) of Integral Theory has asserted itself with its own institutional disciplinary agents, who have increasingly tended to police out (violently if necessary, as the contemporary controversy related to the recent biography, The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, alarmingly and overwhelmingly demonstrates) all subjective interpretation of the way to this goal, and thus to the possibility of a plural realization of the Integral Yoga.

Against this background, the comparative and cross-cultural dialog between Habermas and Sri Aurobindo initiated by Ananta Giri is a salutary intervention. Using each to critique the limits and possibilities of the other, Giri shows how the rational assumptions of knowledge in the Enlightenment ideal lead to aporia which have been amply documented by postmodern thinkers, but which receive a higher validation through the transcendental ontology and praxis of Sri Aurobindo; just as the susceptibility to ontotheological abstraction and totalism of Sri Aurobindo’s phenomenology and praxis when reduced to an Integral Psychology, Integral Theory or Integral Religion can be safeguarded for a plural space through disciplines of intersubjective communication as developed by Habermas.

The Soul of a City: The Crystal Cathedral as Organizing Metaphor for (post)Modern Architecture at the Bauhaus

Debashish — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:38:12 -0700

The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 at Weimar, Germany by Walter Gropius, was arguably the most influential school of design in modern times, set up in the form of a residential creative community of designers, craftsmen, architects and artists. As part of its central ideal, Water Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, envisaged a world made up of creative communities united spiritually in and around a materialized soul, which he likened to "a crystal cathedral." Today, Bauhaus influenced architecture is ubiquitous as the symbol of world modernity, but Gropius' dream is far from fulfilled. This article explores the historical dimensions of this ideal, the causes for its failure and the possible conditions for its postmodern manifestation.

Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - I

Debashish — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:03:33 -0700

Some relections on the continuing issue of techno-capitalism and post-human futures by Debashish Banerji. This is a first fragment highlighting Moishe Postone's commentaries on the late writings of Marx.

A Chronology of Modern Indian Art and Thematic Considerations By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:25:53 -0700

An Introduction to the history of modern Indian art along with an approach to its categorization, as expressed in the curatorial practice of the exhibition "Contours of Modernity" held at the SOKA University, Irvine from February-April, 2005 and curated by Debashish Banerji and Nalini Rao.

Living Laboratories of the Life Divine by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:50:41 -0800

What is the post-human destiny to which we are called as humans in contemporary times? In this transcript of a talk given for the AUM conference in Los Angeles in 2003, Debashish Banerji compares Nietzsche's call for the Overman with that announced by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to point to the similarities and differences. How can we pick our way through the maze of choices held up at this end-time of human becoming? Is it by remaining complacent or by using our wills or by surrender to a greater force than ours? And if so, what force - the vitalism of an unconscious Nature-force, the deceptive "universality" of the world market or an unpredictable future which calls our arduous attention? These and similar questions are posed and discussed in this article.

Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies III

Debashish — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:05:34 -0700

The concluding section on Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies by Debashish Banerji continues its second installment's reflections on the Omniscience, Omnipotence and Omnipresence presented to us as the emerging destiny of post-Enlightenment Modernity and compares this destination with its appropriation and supercession in the Neo-Vedantic teleology of Sri Aurobindo. What are the differences, dangers and promises of these destinies and what are the conditions for achieving an alternate destination? ...

Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - II

Debashish — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:04:11 -0700

This is a fragment constituting a continuation of Debashish Banerji's reflections on Techno-Capitalism as the epistemic regime of modernity and posible post-human futures at the eschatological cusp of history. Here the alignment of Marx and Hegel with the Enlightenment vision/teleology is contemplated and questions asked regarding a comparative alignment with the Neo-Vedantic teleology (if it can be called that) of Sri Aurobindo.

Sri Aurobindo and the Future of Humanity

Debashish — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:36:47 -0700

This article attempts to sketch out Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the future of humanity as carried in his major texts. In doing so, it also tries to underline the cross-cultural nature of these texts and the disciplinary redefinitions implicit in them.

Links to Debashish Banerji's SCIY articles

Ron — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:28:10 -0700

Links to Debashish Banerji's SCIY articles –

• Five Auroville Artists at the Cymroza Gallery, Mumbai

by Debashish on August 5, 2007 09:35AM (PDT)

• Life Divine classes via Skype by Debashish Banerji (Apr.07)

• Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies III (Jan.07)

• A Second Response to Daniel Gustav Anderson's "Towards a Critical Integral Theory" (Dec.06)

• Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - II (Dec.06)

• Techno-Capitalism and Post-Human Destinies - I (Dec.06)

• A Chronology of Modern Indian Art and Thematic Considerations By Debashish Banerji (Nov.06)

• The Psychology of Creativity Course Outline (Oct.06)

• Detachment and The Integral Yoga (Oct.06)

• Introductory Notes to "Hinduism" (Oct.06)

• Jyoti Editorial - February 2006 (Feb.06)

• February 2005: Contours of Modernity - An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art (Nov.05)

• Contours of Modernity - A Picture Gallery (Nov.05)

• A Chronology of Modern Indian Art and Thematic Considerations (Nov.05)

• "The Divine Mother and the Triple Status of the Supermind" by Debashish Banerji (Oct.05)

• Modern and Contemporary Indian Art - an Encyclopedia Article (Oct.05)

• 005 b. db. Transcript: The Promise of the Future (Jun.05)

• 005 a. db. Link to The Promise of the Future (Jun.05)

• The Promise of the Future #1 (Jun.05)

A Second Response to Daniel Gustav Anderson's "Towards a Critical Integral Theory"

Debashish — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:30:45 -0800

Sri Aurobindo is not just the "foundational thinker" of "Integral Theory" – in Anderson’s back-handed compliment “To adapt a meme attributed to Whitehead: if European philosophy amounts to a footnoting of Plato, Integral theory may very well amount to a conversation about Aurobindo.” As I proceeded to read I could see how this is possible if one takes Sri Aurobindo’s Vedantic darshan, Purnadvaita Vedanta (inseparable from its corresponding yoga, Purna Yoga) as a western style speculative metaphysics purporting to be a Theory of Everything, an ideology which maintains itself as Truth through the Will-to-Power and becomes the defining hegemonic ideology of late Enlightenment Neoliberalism through the production of its world-subjects, something perhaps possible. But to attribute the foundation of such an ideological field to Sri Aurobindo is, certainly a new wrinkle to the abuses/misuses of his text which seem to be multiplying lately (as for instance through left and right perceptions of it as the foundational text for Hindutva). ...

Introductory Notes to "Hinduism"

Debashish — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:19:05 -0800

These Introductory Notes on "Hinduism" (a body of Indian religious and spiritual systems which follow the primacy of the Vedas) by Debashish Banerji attempts a cross-cultural description of this complex field seen as an unified discourse. Aspects covered include productive dualities within Hinduism, textual history of Hinduism, major Puranic gods, Hindu practices and the Hindu temple.

The Psychology of Creativity Course Outline

Debashish — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 15:06:14 -0800

The initial draft for the course outline for the Psychology of Creativity course as presented by Debashish Banerji

Reflections on THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY By Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 23:33:43 -0700

In these last chapters of The Ideal of Human Unity, Sri Aurobindo draws together the threads that he has introduced earlier in the work, leading to his conclusion. Though Jan Smuts was yet to coin the word "Holism" to encapsulate the idea that a directed tendency towards the formation of ever-larger aggregates is observable in Nature, each such distinct stage marked by the presence of an identity and properties exceeding those of the sum of their parts, Sri Aurobindo's model of History follows this course. Indeed, this teleology follows naturally from Sri Aurobindo's master-idea of the progressive manifestation of intrinsic spiritual Oneness in Time, expressing itself politically as the drive towards world-union.

Detachment and The Integral Yoga

Debashish — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 23:53:29 -0700

Detachment in a spiritual sense is the development of another dimension within us, a dimension which coexists with our active personality but is outside of it. It is to find an inner freedom, to discover a part of the being that cannot be touched by external circumstances or by the outer being’s activities – a separation within between what we know as ourselves in the world and something which is intrinsic and connected to an infinite being, a sort of an immutable witnessing.

Jyoti Editorial - February 2006

Debashish — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 06:21:02 -0800

The convulsive forces of the bio and psycho spheres are breaking through the outer crust once again today, since a new Divine manifestation is in the making and the earth will not rest content with our half-successes. The apathy of the faithful will not serve us here. To believe that the Divine will quell these forces while we remain their puppets in our inner and outer lives will bring no succor. What we are called upon to respond with today is the active aspiration that allows Shiva to act though us, to give us the Force and even more, the Skill, not merely to defeat or destroy, but to transform, to turn to song.

Savitri Classes at LA Center

Ron — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 02:10:54 -0800

This topic includes past & ongoing audio recordings of "Savitri" classes led by Debashish Banerji, at the Los Angeles Sri Aurobindo Center. They're also available as podcasts on Apple's iTunes site. Read the rest of this article for instructions ...

Contours of Modernity - A Picture Gallery

Debashish — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:23:30 -0800

Contours of Modernity: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art was held at the Founder's Hall of SOKA University in Irvine from February to April 2005. The exhibiiton was curated by Debashish Banerji and Nalini Rao. Here we present a gallery of images from the exhibition with brief artist biographies.

"The Divine Mother and the Triple Status of the Supermind" by Debashish Banerji

Debashish — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 15:39:29 -0700

A transcript of the Guru Pershad Lecture given at the Sri Aurobindo Society Beach Office in Dec. 2004, this article links a key chapter in The Life Divine with the Mother.

Modern and Contemporary Indian Art - an Encyclopedia Article

Debashish — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 00:33:42 -0700

The regime of modernity in India can be said to begin from the turn of the 17th/18th c. with the setting up of trading interests in Calcutta by the British East India Company. The British occupation of India swiftly replaced the indigenous miniature schools with naturalistic Company Painting and institutional forms such as art salons and art schools generated a new breed of Indian elite painters who turned to oils and water colors in a British style, though often with Indian subjects from myth, portraiture or landscape. ...

096 db. Co-existence of Unity and Infinity in the Truth

Ron — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:22:00 -0700

It is this mentally incomprehensible co-existence of Unity and Infinity in the Truth that it is critical to meditate on. It results in a great diversity of conclusions, not least of all the very possibility of this relational evolutionary universe and the unending self-discovery of Being. ...

094 db. I'd like to see an "affective intersubjective space" based on a real community

Ron — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:30:00 -0700

I have been browsing with interest the posts ﬂying at supersonic speed on this list without being able to take much part due to a very pressured present schedule. However, on the subject of intersubjectivity and the collective yoga, I would like to add a few words for now (and maybe elaborate later, when time permits). ...

040 db. Questions re Rich’s post

Ron — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 15:01:51 -0700

Rich, From your post, I extracted the following concerns: 1) Do we need to interpret the events happening around us as a part of the integral yoga? ... ... These are all very loaded quations that merit our deepest consideration. At this moment it is difficult for me to find the time to give adequate answers, but I do hope others will give them due attention. ...

029 db. Matthij's AUM talk

Ron — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:30:00 -0700

029 db. Matthij's AUM talk

Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:29:42 -0700
From: "Debashish Banerji" <ewcc@verizon.net>
Subject: Matthij's AUM talk
To: scienceandspirit@sriaurobindocenter-la.com

Message - 029/149

And now, Shyam Maniyedath has transcribed Matthij"s AUM talk and it has also been archived.

Please access for reading or download from:

http://www.sriaurobindocenter-la.com/postaum2005/MatthijsAUM05.doc

Matthijs, it will be nice if you could download this yourself and browse is for correctness; and if you wish to make any changes, pass on the edited version to me. In the meantime, members of this list can go through what has been transcribed and hopefully comment, question or add their own contributions.

Debashish

028 db. Shyam Maniyedath has transcribed Matthij"s AUM talk

Ron — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 01:19:27 -0700

Michael has supplied a Microsoft Word version of his article re Integral
Yoga in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and it is now archived
in the text area.

You can access it for browsing or download at:

http://www.sriaurobindocenter-la.com/postaum2005/MMiovicJTP.doc

005 a. db. Link to The Promise of the Future

Ron — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 17:53:00 -0700

Ron Anastasia has been kind enough to transcribe my AUM talk and I have uploaded the talk to the text file area. Please access it at: ...

Invitation to the Post-AUM2005 discussion group

Ron — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:43:00 -0700

Preceeding AUM 2005, whose theme was Science and Spirituality, a mailing list had been set up to allow speakers and panelists to share views prior to the event and get to know each others' standpoints. Now, following the AUM, we have expanded the list and changed its name to reﬂect the oreintation for the future. It is now called postaum2005 and members can post to it by sending mail to: ...

004 db. Link to The Vision

Ron — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:46:09 -0700

Since some people have had difficulty opening or saving the Microsoft Word
text file TheVision.doc upon clicking the link, I am giving the link
once more. It is:

http://www.sriaurobindocenter-la.com/postaum2005/TheVision.doc

002 db. File Archiving Enabled

Ron — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:10:00 -0700

File archiving for this forum has been temporarily enabled at
http://www.sriaurobindocenter-la.com/postaum2005. Presently, the
Microsoft Word version of The Vision can be found there by going to: ...

001.db.Vision Statement for the postaum2005 Message Board

Ron — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 19:32:00 -0700

In our world of ignorance, omniscience is stepped down from its spiritual poise to be expressed as a quest for knowledge which is embodied by science and omnipotence is stepped down from its original source to be articulated in technology as a will to power. The intent of the post-AUM list is to explore the exponential evolution of the species as it is driven by both efﬁcient and deﬁcient forms of knowledge as well as efﬁcient and deﬁcient forms of power. The meaning assigned to the term efﬁcient refers to those forces which facilitate the spiritual evolution of consciousness as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo. The term deﬁcient refers to those forces driving culture and science which appear to impede the progression of the spiritualization of consciousness. ...

The Promise of the Future #1

Ron — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 10:42:00 -0700

Since circumstances have conspired to make it impossible to put out a new issue of the Jyoti online journal of late, and since AUM2005 is just around the corner, I am posting here independently the lead article meant for the new Jyoti by Richard Carlson. ...

Availability of Anie Nunnally's book - "The Golden Path"

Ron — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 16:52:00 -0800

We are pleased to announce that Anie Nunnally's book THE GOLDEN PATH, has just arrived from the Ashram press in Pondicherry and is now available for sale at the East West Cultural Center. This little gem of a book is certain to be viewed as a treasure by all involved in the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. ...

From Amrita - an older preAum posting which never got onto jyotilist

Ron — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 00:26:00 -0800

While I am still wondering what 'one-celled immortal cells' are, I have once again resumed following the pre-AUM dialogs with interest.

Here are my comments, questions and quotes that I would like to share. ...

the immortal cell

Ron — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:35:00 -0800

First of all I think your response to my initial email might serve as a good intro to the email list for all particpants coming to AUM. that said Glad to hear you are recovering from you surgery. Hope you will be all put back together by the time of the AUM. I hope this email formats correctly as I have had some trouble sending from a distance and today I am in New Orleans.

you wrote: ...

The preAUM2005 elist

Ron — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:22:00 -0800

A new elist has been set up for discussions leading up to the AUM2005, sponsored by Richard Carlson and to be held in the state of Washington in June of this year. ...